The weather was much improved for the men’s race with dry, cold conditions and much less wind. The result was familiar though….
Results
After a debut French winner in the women’s race yesterday we had someone who is much more used to the top step of the podium there today. Quentin Fillon Maillet was victorious! It has been a while since the 32-year-old tasted victory, nearly three years in fact, and I bet it tasted sweet. He hit 10/10 and with the third best course time win number 17 was his.
In fact it was an excellent day for the French team with a podium clean sweep and five athletes in the top 10. It was Fabien Claude who claimed second spot also hitting the perfect ten but was not fast enough to challenge QFM finishing 15 seconds back. His first win is surely coming but he will be frustrated at another missed opportunity.
Emilien Jacquelin continued his good form in third place. A single miss in his standing shoot prevented any chance of a win but he has now made the podium at every World Cup so far this season.
The last time the French men swept the podium was when Martin Fourcade’s won his final race in the Kontiolahti Pursuit in 2020 where he was joined by QFM and Jacquelin! Could there be another tomorrow?
Emilien Claude shot clean in 8th to take his career best result and Eric Perrot was 10th with 9/10 completing France’s five finishers in the top 10.
Hits
Other personal bests came from Konstantin Vasilev in 51st and Sondre Slettemark in 65th. There were some more WC debuts today with Marco Barale finishing 72nd, Jasper Fleming in 85th and Fabien Suchodolski in 91st.
It was good to see Dmytro Pidruchnyi in 4th with no misses. He has had 1 win and four 4th places in his career- he doesn’t do second or third! It was also good to see Adam Vaclavik back on the World Cup doing well in 19th.
Misses
I don’t know if you can call finishing 13th a miss but maybe for JT Boe it is! He had some sickness over the break but he still had the fastest ski time. Three misses are what caused him the trouble. The home crowd didn’t have much to celebrate with the top German man Justus Strelow in 18th.
Extra bullets
Johannes Boe still holds both the yellow bib and the red bib for the sprint but Jacquelin is only 24 points behind him now in the sprint standings. Campbell Wright stretched his lead in the blue bib with another excellent race coming home 9th.
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